Peculiarities of the Russian Language

Quick and dirty, a reminder of some of the letter sounds:


В sounds like our V, and in some cases F. Г sounds like hard G, and in certain uses, like V. Д is D, while Ж is like a French J. Л is L, П is P, and Р is R. Ф is F, Ц is the combined consonant "TS," and Я sounds as "YAH."
 
Here's a detail with comparatives, which won't suffer much by my being forced at present to write in transliteration. When using a comparative, if you want to indicate that the _degree_ of change or difference is a small one, you add the multipurpose preposition "PO" in front of the comparative word. For instance, if you were asking someone to speak just a little louder, you could say, "GOVORITE PO-GROMCHE."
 
I tried to teach myself Russian over the summer. my grandfather on my mother's side was born in Russia, and i'm really interested in their history and culture and language. i didn't have much luck though, because their alphabet is so different, i had a hard time remembering which letter made what sound.
 
i think its useful because ive been forgetting some minor things in the language. this basically covers what ive missed/forgotten..most of it:p
 
One thing that intrigues me about Russian is that, while their VERBS display remarkable narrowness and precision in conveying tiny differences of meaning, their NOUNS can be appallingly vague. For instance, the neuter noun "IZDELIYE"--related to the verb for "to do" or "to make"--can mean virtually ANY artificially-made object smaller than a house. And the masculine noun "AVTOMAT," most often used to refer to an automatic firearm, can also mean practically any device which is in any sense automatic.
 
/x/

HugsForReepicheep said:
Or my Portuguese X :) ...Hum, could you give us another example, Copperfox? My knowledge of German is (apart from my previous quote) zero.
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From a linguistic standpoint, the /x/ is made similarly to making an /h/, except the back of the tongue is raised high, almost as if it were reaching up to make a /k/, but you don't quite touch the roof of your mouth with the back of your tongue.
New Year Blessings,
Benisse
 
Actually, you can touch the roof of your mouth while making the guttural sound...provided you _don't_ "smack" the tongue away from the palate. A true pure K sound requires the tongue to "break away" from the roof of the mouth, explosively, in somewhat the way the lips part when making a P sound.
 
Returning to nouns of overly broad meaning:

In English, we practically never use the words "fight" or "battle" unless _both_ of the opposite parties in the encounter are able to do something in it. A drive-by gang shooting of helpless victims is _not_ a "fight" or "battle"--though the cowardly murderers will congratulate themselves, in the words of Mr. Lewis, "AS IF they had done something brave."

Yet in Russian, there is a noun: "DRAKA" (no connection with "Dracula"), which can mean a two-sided, evenly-matched fight, OR a one-sided attack on a defenseless or unresisting victim--two very different things.
 
russian is an interesting language because you can mix up the words in any order, am i right? you can say ya tyebya lyublyu, tyebya ya lyublyu, lyublyu ya tyebya, etc.
 
Not in all cases can you shuffle word order... but yes, you can in some situations:

1: Я пошла отдыхать
2: Пошла я отдыхать
3: Я отдыхать пошла
 
It's been awhile since I've provided phonetic illustrations for the benefit of those who've never heard Russian being spoken. (As Dayhawk has remarked, that language is at once harsh and yet musical--a paradox, just like the country that speaks it.) So, the following is English _words_ written in Russian _letters_ to give a sample of sound. Remember that Russian lacks some of our sounds, such as TH and the short A as in "cat;" so this is only my best possible approximation of some well-known words in English....

Ай пледж аллийджанц ту да флэг ав да Юнайтед Стейц ав Америка.

(I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.)
 
Another purely phonetic alphabet-sample, just because. Remember that a D sound is substituted for the TH which does not exist in Russian; also that it's a judgment call using A or O for our short-O vowel sound.


Ин а хол ин да граунд дер ливд а хоббит.

= In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
 
Here's another, still just phonetic to promote alphabet recognition. Here an F sound is substituted for a hard TH.


Уат а мэн гец фэнкд фор, хи тендз ту ду мор ав.

= What a man gets thanked for, he tends to do more of.
 
Cyrillic memories

Copperfox said:
...the following is English _words_ written in Russian _letters_ to give a sample of sound...
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When I was in high school one of my friends and I both learned the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet so we could encode our notes to each other in it. Your Pledge of Allegiance brought back some happy memories.
 
A randomly-thought-up authentic Russian sentence.

Поскольку ты часто врал, я больше не доверяю тебе.

Pronounced "puh-SKOAL-koo ti* CHAH-stuh vrahl, yah BOWL-sheh ni DOH-ver-YAH-yu teb-YEH."

* The notorious "sixty-one" vowel which is so hard to explain.

Meaning: "Since you often have lied, I no longer trust you."
 
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